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Avoiding a showdown

A few days ago, I remarked on how this election was "a season of volatility," and added that in spite of that, in Iowa "both the Republicans and the Democrats will have one more opportunity to make their final pitches before voters head to their local precincts."

Well, scratch that. Democrats definitely got a last opportunity to hear former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley make their final arguments. While the candidates did not get a chance to confront each other, they spent the better part of two hours answering questions from undecided voters.

And even with all the media attention and visits by the candidates, Iowans are famous for placing a banana peel in the path of so-called front-runners. Which leads me to believe that the Republicans might be in for a surprise.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump threw democracy under the bus by dropping out of the most anticipated debate before the Iowa caucuses. After months of back and forth between the Fox News Channel, anchor Megyn Kelly and others, Trump has decided to pull out.

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The media loves the unusual, and Trump, a 21st-century P.T. Barnum, knows how to feed their hunger. The Republican caucus, like the Democrats', remains a photo-finish horse race. But, here's a stunner: A Fox network poll showed that as some voters moved from Sen. Ted Cruz to Trump, their likelihood of voting at a caucus dropped in just two weeks from "definitely" (59 percent) to "probably" (54 percent). Trump's unending fireworks and chaos might be producing emotional overload among Republican voters. A drop in voting enthusiasm is not good.

Trump had boasted earlier that "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." He started his campaign with an aim to possess the Republican hard right by telling them, in street language, what they wanted to hear — and so, bind them to him as "authentic" and as "someone who says what we're thinking." In truth, today they are Trump's possession.

Trump, who in 2011 praised Kelly's moderating skills, today says she's so "mean" to him that he'd withdraw rather than be toyed with by a moderator. It's well known that conservatives hate the press, so of course, they nodded in agreement.

Using Kelly as cover, Trump was a no-show for a debate where the pressure to perform was enormous. It only takes a single, significant slip for a candidate's fortunes to change. That's the kind of pressure presidents deal with daily. But Trump dodged the danger by using an excuse he knew his followers would accept.

Trump claims to have won all the debates, which isn't true. He did poorly in the second debate, falling significantly in the polls. The last debate was considered a toss-up. And professionals in the political arena unanimously consider Cruz the best debater of the remaining 12-candidate field.

Cruz would have worked to maneuver Trump into a position where he'd have to talk specifics. That's something Trump can't do because he is the least informed. Trump was the only candidate, for instance, who didn't know our nuclear defense is based on a triad strategy of bombers, missiles and submarine-launched missiles.

Right-wing media was quick to note that Ronald Reagan skipped the last debate in Iowa in 1980. However, Reagan lost Iowa, something his private polling likely showed before he dropped out. As long as Trump doubles and triples down on the hard right's agenda — near-zero taxes, a wall, no Mexican immigrants, no Syrians ever, no Muslims for the foreseeable future — his supporters will see Trump's debate-dodging as a show of strength, rather than what it is: fear of his weaknesses being exposed.

Before all this, Trump was busy emphasizing his Christian faith in hopes of corralling the huge evangelical vote in Iowa. He attended a church service and flew the son of the Rev. Jerry Falwell out to endorse him. But, Cruz's father happens to be an evangelical minister. He has conducted crusades across Iowa that have reputedly won many hearts for his son Ted. During this last week, the Rev. Cruz was "hitting two to four churches a day."

Trump has turned the 2016 election into showmanship. Other than neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson and businesswoman Carly Fiorina, his opponents are all seasoned office holders. They know how to "work a crowd" and sell an issue. But Trump is a ringmaster, and with the possible exception of Cruz, the rest don't know how to handle the studied chaos-inducing approach that Trump has mastered; a chaos he uses to control issues and to steal the spotlight.

It would be a mistake to accept Trump's assessment of his candidacy. Cruz is the first candidate who seems to grasp just how it is that Trump dominates the campaign. Cruz has gained enough votes that Trump's strategists thought it best he skip the last debate. It wasn't Megyn Kelly after all. It was Cruz's steady gains that provoked Trump's retreat days before the final debate that voters and the democratic process both needed.

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